My Experience with a Physical Amazon Bookstore

While I have not been a trumpeter of the view that online stores will completely replace physical stores, this idea has been closest to reality in the case of bookshops. And it is understandable since Amazon has done a fantastic job in creating a store that makes it immensely easy to purchase books. As a client of the corporation and one who has purchased both the paper and Kindle version of books, I made the trip to an Amazon bookstore in Georgetown for the first time a couple of days ago.

I am aware that Amazon tactics are driven by lots of data and their responsiveness to client needs is legendary. Thus as a client who lives in a country that does not have the physical stores, I was very alert to see what a physical store for the giant retailer looks like. I write my assessment below.

Perhaps it was my high expectation or because I stayed in the store for just half an hour but I found that there is a start stark difference in the experience between shopping online and visiting the store even if both are run by a great retailing firm. In short, the experience in that particular bookstore was not overwhelming. I attribute this assessment despite that fact that the store was well laid out, had vast volumes of books and I found all the stuff I was searching for. My main thinking is that I expected an Amazon store to be much better than others in the same way that its website is far better. 

The Amazon store that I visited did not stand out and I know a couple of independent bookstores in many parts of the world that are memorable. The one in Georgetown was not. 

Recommended Reading for Some African Leaders

A number of nations on the African continent have been independent for half a century now. In that time, very few of these nations have had an unbroken series of hand over of political authority. Also instructive is that a good number of the individuals with economic clout have an existing or past connection with the governments. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have a book that explains by trawling through history how and why societies have generated economic prosperity and political stability. In their view, societies are either extractive or inclusive. Extractive societies are those in which political institutions channel power and wealth from the majority towards the minority while inclusive institutions exist where there is pluralism that allows for participation in public affairs and reduces monopoly in both markets or political power.

"However, in most cases of sub-Saharan Africa and many in Asia, the post-independence governments simply took a page out of Robert Michel's book and repeated and intensified the abuses of their predecessors, often severely narrowing the distribution of political power, dismantling constraints, and undermining the already meager incentives that economic institutions provided for investment and economic progress."  In, Why Nations Fail, Pages 112-113.